Events

Big Data and policy making: What are the challenges and opportunities?

18-10-2016

Big data has the potential to advance collective decision-making processes. For example, Data mining has become increasingly popular to obtain a better understanding of what is relevant to the public. Furthermore sentiment analysis evaluates public opinion and can be applied to monitor and assess the effectiveness of policies.

However it can also be challenging to use innovative data-driven approaches for policy making. Having more data doesn’t necessarily lead to more actionable insights and the complex skill sets required for big data analytics pose a particularly acute challenge.

EURACTIV organised a workshop to explore the following topics:
- What are the promises and limitations of big data for policy making?
- How can data mining be used to develop a better informed policy?
- What challenges have to be considered with an innovative data-driven policy approach?
- Do policymakers provide adequate legislation for the rising need of data processing?